Page 6 - Bitter Icons

Bitter Harvest in terms of genre can be characterized as a historical drama or even as romance.
The story follows Yuri in his native village and portrays the Ukrainian village life as prosperous

and peaceful. It alludes to the Russian revolution and overthrow of the Tzar and there is hope
of the Ukraine to gain more freedom. The peace is soon shattered by the plans of Stalin as

collectivization is implemented and a group of Bolsheviks with the villain Sergei at its head
enters their village. There is also the love story of Yuri and Natalka on top of the whole histor-

ical background. We later follow Yuri and his friend Mykola to Kiev as there seemingly are

more possibilities there, in the new socialist paradise. But Natalka decides to stay behind. Ar-
riving in Kiev Yuri is accepted in the arts academy and Mykola has gained a prominent role in

the Ukrainian communist party. They have hope that the socialist experience will benefit them,
but it soon turns out that something is terribly wrong as starving peasants flock to the city and

the oppressive atmosphere in the country increases.

During the film the Ukrainians are portrayed as innocent and a few of the Ukrainian characters

have a backstory which renders them more real and human. The Soviets are represented as pure
evil for the most part and as inhuman. The Bolsheviks in charge of implementing the collectiv-

ization in the village treat the people with utter disrespect and they even at points plunder, rape

and kill. The head of this evil, Sergei, comes off as a one-dimensional character that blindly
and mercilessly follows the orders of Stalin. There are a few important scenes with Stalin sitting

in Moscow, surrounded by luxury and food, with his advisors and he also is definitely painted
as a merciless monster. His advisors actually try to advise him not to implement the collectivi-

zation plans in such a harsh and merciless way, whereby he counters “…Who in the world will
know?”

Issues of Repression and Awareness
We can then ask the question: What is the state of awareness of the Holodomor? And we can

ask: What part does it play for the cultural and collective memory of Ukrainian as a nation?
And can it become a part of the international or transnational memory, like the Holocaust?

Examples of earlier works that brought awareness to the Holodomor are mainly of academic

character, like Robert Conquests Harvest of Sorrow from 1986, the memoir of a survivor of the
famine Miron Dolot titled Execution by Hunger – The Hidden Holocaust and some documen-

taries. Still, the Holodomor is even today not a well-known atrocity on par with the Jewish
Holocaust. One reason is that the story had been suppressed and ignored for such a long time:

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